Over the last year I must have repaired half a dozen of these delightful solid state amps. Compact, loud and fully bobbly carpeted – nice. These amps are realy well made and rightly retain their value beyond the competition.
Features are soldered connections throughout, nicely dressed wiring, serious pot earthing (see bottom of pic below) and quality capacitors.
Common Faults
Jack plugs introducing hiss and crackles.
Op amps failing usually results in a very non-musical distortion like a loud crackling. Fortunately repair is very straightforward with replacement components easily available and not at all expensive. Below you can see the socketed TL072 dual op-amps.
Tony Ward the designer is still around mainly playing the guitar these days but also provides some replacement component modules such as an upgraded power ampplifier on his web site. Just google award session amplifiers to find out more.
I see here that you worked on a Sessionette amp. I have a Sessionette 75 here in Portland Oregon in the repair shop and it seems the issue is a few transistors in the power amp section. I was told they do not make them any more and to get these parts he is checking foreign ebay sites. Any advice you can give me at all would be very much appreciated! Thanks Chas
Hi Charles I think that is correct – unobtainable. You could take a look at the award session website as they do offer a replacement amp module and an upgrade option. See here https://www.award-session.com/sessionette.php
Lot of love for these amps in the UK so maybe worth the investment.
Thank you very much for your prompt response.
Cheers, Charles
I’ve got a session duette with the heavy crackling/ distortion that you mentioned. Could you repair it for me? Thankyou, Clive ?
Hi Clive,
Yes no problem getting a repair. Most sessionettes will last forever but they do suffer from pots and connectors wearing out that cause havoc. I am currently on a summer go slow but will lift the shutters in Mid September.
Cheers